Apollo: what was the big deal?

Question

I am curious what aspects of the Apollo program were impressive/advanced from an engineering perspective, in the 1960s and 1970s. That is, what would have made an educated engineer say, “Wow, they solved that problem?”

I ask the question because I know that as an engineering layperson I know I have very poor intuitions about what is technically difficult in spaceflight. For instance, I only learned from this website that maintaining 1 atm of pressure in a spacecraft isn't very difficult. Also, some technologies like pressure suits and rocket engines had already been developed. So it is not obvious (to me) what the actual innovations and engineering achievements of the program were.

Answer 1

There was no one breakthrough that made it possible. The "big deal", in the mind of the world, was just that an obviously very hard thing was accomplished. And, if you doubted how hard it was, people can point out that no one has done it again in more than fifty years.

However, there are some good examples of challenging problems that had to be solved.

Problem 1: Rocket Size. Before Apollo, everyone thought we would send the top of a multi-stage rocket to the moon, it would land on its tail and launch again to return to earth. When you run the numbers on that, you end up with a pretty big lander requiring a lot of fuel, and a huge launcher to send it on its way; much larger than Saturn. The trick ended up being to only send down a little bug, and even leave part of that behind on the moon. If we had stuck with the giant lander we would never have been ready in time.

Problem 2: Rendezvous. The new method required being good at approaching and docking with another spacecraft. That's a hard enough problem that, even though the physics was well understood, they didn't really see the issues until they actually tried it. (I always get annoyed when characters in science fiction stories fail to foresee problems that the science should have told them beforehand, but sometimes that's how it works.) Wisely they tried it in Gemini in low earth orbit and had the hang of it by Apollo.

Problem 3: Rocket Size (Again). Even with the trick (called Lunar Orbit Rendezvous) used to solve Problem 1, they needed a much bigger rocket than anyone had built before. And so they built it. To get it to the launch pad, they built the crawler transporters, some of the largest land vehicles built up to that time, and to have a protected place to stack the stages, they built the Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings by open volume in the world. I think seeing a tower the size of a 36-story skyscraper rise into the sky made a lot of people say, "Wow, they solved that problem?" I was too young at the time, but it was the initial uncrewed Apollo 4 launch of the Saturn V that made my dad think, "Huh, they might actually pull this off!"

There are many many more, but it was really the cumulative effect of solving thousands of hard problems that was the big deal.

(Note: "Problem 3" was added later upon rereading. The visible bigness was just so impressive, and it also is a fair reflection of the huge systems engineering demands that others have mentioned.)

Answer 2

what has ALWAYS impressed the heck out of me is the sheer magnitude of scale involved... not physical size (although its size was truly impressive) but rather the huge number of complex problems that needed to be all solved in a complex optimization matrix to arrive at a suitable overall solution. This was the largest systems integration project ever to date and on a tight timeline. Project management on an unheard of scale and scope. That to me was the "Wow... they solved THAT problem" thing.

Answer 3

It was fractally hard.

Everything they did was Voltroning hard problems together to solve other hard problems. And this was all done in a coordinated way on an incredibly tight timescale.

The long answer would fill a series of books. E.g. for a high level overview of the effort involved in the LEM alone, you can look at Tom Kelly's Moon Lander (and you should; it's great).

But to put a quick gloss on top of it, Apollo was not an aerospace engineering triumph, Apollo was a systems engineering triumph. Everyone solved hard problems in every field, but the real accomplishment was orchestrating those solutions in a way that led a seven-year program from zero to the moon.

Answer 4

Additionally, while computers did exist, there was no Finite Element Analysis or modelling software. A lot of the engineering was done on slide rules, intuition, iterative testing, and ultimately lives.

Consider that the Apollo Guidance Computers were very complex (for the time) digital computers, but that the integrated circuit was only created in 1963. AGC had more in common with an 80's air-conditioner thermostat than a modern general purpose computer like a Commodore PET, a late 70's device often described as having about the same "computing power" as the AGC.

Answer 5

There were lots of hard and soft technologies which had to be advanced before a moon-shot was possible. I would not trivialize these challenges in any way - even if there was no deadline to contend with.

• Rocket engines & fuels

• Alloys for both engine and spacecraft that withstood the structural and environmental demands of take-off, space flight and re-entry

• Space navigation and rendezvous

• Control engineering - fluidics, mechanical, electrical & electronic

• Space photography & image analysis

• Space suits

• Health maintenance (diet, exercise, grooming, etc) in microgravity environment

On top of all that astronauts had reams of observations and formal experiments to do during the spaceflight and while on the moon surface.

I suggest that you read Mike Collins' book Carrying The Fire as a readable and well-explained summary of the Apollo programme.

Answer 6

One problem that was solved was the restoration of American pride - proving that yes, the country could beat the Soviets in space. The American public was alarmed by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Initially, America could only reply with "Kaputnik" ("Flopnik" or "Dudnik") launches until it finally got its act together.

Then the Soviets beat the US with the first animal in orbit, the first man in space, the first woman in space and the first space walk. With all these first taken, America had to go big and go for the Moon. That's what Apollo was about - getting to the Moon and beating the communist Soviets.

Things that weren't problems to solve, but proved useful:

• Velcro
• The use of solid state electronics in space, as opposed to tubes/valves
• Tang! :-)
• The space pen

Answer 7

The big deal was the economy.

The competing USSR (+ friends) did have the same technology available (more or less). They did well in smaller space projects.

The Apollo project was stunningly expensive and required various kinds of industrial capacity. This is what 1960s USA had and USSR had not, by a very large margin.

Answer 8

In my opinion, it was the proceed and management of a very large project involving over 400,000 people, including the end workers. When John Fitzgerald Kennedy said he would land a man on the Moon during the 1960s, I don't think anyone knew how to do it or even understood where to begin. Once the project was up and running, they had to keep moving forward, solving problem after problem on time.

Apollo Program is regarded as “NASA’s first formal system of project management” (Seymour & Hussein 2014, p. 236). The program involved thorough planning, organising and managing various stages and processes. It had all major attributes of a project with definite aims, timeline and budget (Nicholas & Steyn 2008).

Importantly, the program was one of the first examples of effective project management that enabled many business and industries develop. The American society was expecting a global project with unprecedented goals and such a project was implemented. The American society was inspired and prepared to achieve other aims.

From this point of view, I think that "Project Management" as the first choice.

Managing the moon program -lessons learned from project apollo

Was Project Management Life Really Better in Apollo?

Apollo Program and Project Management Report

Apollo 11: Lessons in Project Management

As an aside, an area in which I am personally most interested in how the technical difficulties were overcome is the GNCS (GUIDANCE, NAVIGATION AND CONTROL SYSTEM), which focuses on AGC hardware/software.